Former Obama chief strategist David Axelrod said the Obama campaign thoroughly vetted former Vice President Joe Biden and found no allegations of sexual misconduct.
Axelrod, a CNN contributor, wrote an opinion article for the network on Friday saying they did not find any complaints or rumors that the former Delaware senator sexually assaulted his former staffer Tara Reade.
“The comprehensive vet certainly would have turned up any formal complaints filed against Biden during his 36-year career in the Senate. It did not. The team would have investigated any salacious rumors of the sort that travel far and wide in Washington. There were none,” Axelrod said.
Biden was recently accused of sexual assault by Reade, who was his Senate aide from 1992 to 1993. According to Reade, Biden ran his hand underneath her skirt and penetrated her with his fingers at the time. Biden has denied the claim.
Axelrod, who was a chief architect of the Obama campaigns, says he was not on the team to investigate Biden’s history, but he was briefed regularly on their findings. “Had any credible issue been raised, you can be sure Biden would not have been the nominee. Obama would not have tolerated it, even if he and Biden were close then, which they were not,” he wrote.
“Our society is just now confronting a long, sordid history of disregarding accusations and silencing women who were sexually abused or assaulted. Women who come forward deserve to be taken seriously and treated with respect, and Tara Reade’s story should be heard and thoroughly investigated,” Axelrod later said, diverging from the widely popularized mantra “believe women” during the #MeToo movement.
“But it is striking that when an experienced vetting team put Biden under a microscope before he was chosen to be second-in-line for the presidency, neither her allegations, nor anything resembling them in Biden’s history, showed up,” he said.
